On 2010-12-21, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
Ignoramus30024 fired this volley in
:

Then you would be right at home with EMC2!

If one of the vendors sells a kit version with EMC2, I'd be happier than
a pig in slop.

Lloyd, is your machine servo motor based?

Do you know what your encoders are like?

I considered my mill a "kit", in the sense of coming with servo motors
mounted on it. I just had to add encoders, servo amps, control box
etc.

Also another kit-like element was Jon's PPMC controller.

The reason why I am glad that I did not go with a kit is two fold:

1) I know everything about how my mill functions
2) I can add stuff to it, like a rotary indexer, spindle encoder, 4th
axis, etc, as much as I want, and I am not limited by only three
connectors on a "kit".

Adding the rotary indexer took literally one evening. I thought for a
lot longer about it, as you know, but just doing it was borderline
trivial.

Adding a spindle encoder also took 2 months thinking and some aborted
attempts to make a shaft adaptor, but once I made one, it took only
one day (same day as I made the adaptor).

The 4th axis will be harder, due to resolver converter issues,

I greatly doubt that I could do any of this with a "kit".

Furthermore, I bought (for $2) a Saitek P880 joypad at a garage sale.

Wiring it in took a couple of hours, and that was this long only
because I was stupid. I just copied a config from some guy and did a
bad job at this, otherwise it would be one hour.

Now this joypad, is far superior in convenience to any jogging
controls that I have personally seen, which admittedly is not that
many. Could I do it with a kit? I am not too sure, Pete C may have
something to add about that.


I'm NOT terribly happy with some of the inherent quirks in the BOSS9
control. I have an engraving project I've been fiddling with in the odd
half-hour of spare time for over two months. It just "e-stops" for no
visible reason; every time, at the same line of code. Nothing out of
range, no axis limits exceeded, nothing except in the FIST log a cryptic
"motion command that took too long..." (or some-sort; I don't have the
message handy now) and part of the message cuts off at the edge of the
field. But I cannot find anything it exceeds.

It's in a G03 block, and I run G3s and G2s all the time for cornering
blocks. I'll figure it out, and it'll probably be something like
(haven't explored this) the center of the arc being outside the "frame"
of the work area... It is prepping a very gentle curve when it fails.

Can you break that G3 into two smaller G3s? Would that help?

Eg instead of from (0,0) to (2,0) WITH radis 1, you could go through
(1,1): instead of G3 X2 R1 you would say G3 X1 Y1 R1, G3 X2 Y0 R1,
Would that help?

i